Revised draft screenplay, February 11, 1983—153 pages. It’s not often that a screenplay gets longer, but it appears this one did. Joe Wizan became head of production at 20th Century Fox for a short period of time and tried to get the movie made there. WE had a small office and I believe this draft has to do with notes given by director Barry Levinson, who Joe had a strong personal relationship with at the time. Barry had troubles with the screenplay because there were elements in it that reminded him of HIGH ANXIETY that we worked on with Mel Brooks.

Jim and I still did not have a screenplay produced and were frantic to get a movie made. I had a small office with the world’s loudest air conditioner. This the draft where we had 3 secretaries on call and had to get a new draft out in 24 hours and had people typing around the clock. It was insane. Computers make revisions so much easier. This is a cut and paste draft, which was the way we did a lot of our work.

Barry Levinson was never really deeply involved or committed to making the movie. He worked with us as a favor for Joe Wizan. Eventually he went on to another project and we just sort of dumped his revisions.